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Summary: Chapter 15
Two years have passed since Ishmael became a soldier. He is now fifteen and his unit is based at a village northwest of Mattru Jong. Only three of the boys Ishmael arrived in Yele with two years ago are still alive: Alhaji, Kanei, and Jumah. Ishmael’s former corporal is dead, but the lieutenant is still in command. During a social event he hosts, he quotes Shakespeare to Ishmael. The next morning, four civilians arrive, from UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The lieutenant selects fifteen of the younger soldiers to step forward and lay down their weapons. Ishmael and Alhaji are chosen, but Kanei is not. The lieutenant thanks the selected ones for their military service and tells them they are going back to school.
Ishmael is angry over the loss of his rifle and over being separated from his squad, and he feels that the lieutenant has betrayed him. Ismael hides a bayonet and a grenade in his clothing. Escorted by MPs, Ishmael and the other boys board trucks that drive many miles and finally deliver the boys to a dormitory-like facility in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. At dinner, an angry standoff with another group of former boy soldiers led by a boy named Mambu ends peacefully when it comes out that the two groups fought for the same side. A fight with former rebel boys, however, turns deadly. Ishmael uses his grenade, and everyone who has brought a bayonet uses it. Six boys are killed. MPs move the former government fighters to a different facility, separate from the former rebels. The drugs in Ishmael’s system are starting to wear off and his head begins to hurt.
Summary: Chapter 16
Angry and unable to satisfy their drug cravings, the boys destroy furniture and supplies at the new facility as well as physically abuse the staff. The staff’s gentle, patient response only enrages the boys further. When Ishmael injures his hand by punching a glass window, a kind nurse bandages him. An army lieutenant flirting with the nurse causes Ishmael to think back to his time as the leader of a small team that performed quick missions. The team consisted of Kanei, Alhaji, Jumah, and Moriba, who had been close friends with Saidu. Alhaji was given the nickname “Little Rambo” for his conduct during one raid, and Ishmael was dubbed “the Green Snake.” Moriba died in a rebel attack that drove Ishmael’s unit out of Yele. Searching for a new base of operations in pouring rain, the unit came upon a rebel village and captured it. They made the few survivors dig their own graves, tortured them, and finally buried them alive.
Drug withdrawal and traumatic memories cause the boys to break down, psychologically. Ishmael thinks he sees blood flowing from water taps. One day, Mambu suggests that instead of burning their school supplies, they should sell them, which they proceed to do. Then, Mambu, Ishmael, and Alhaji use the money spend a day enjoying the sights of Freetown. The school makes town trips part of the routine, a reward for attending class. The boys continue to struggle psychologically, however. After several months, Ishmael can go to sleep without medication, but he regularly wakes up in a violent panic after dreaming that his throat is being slit.
Summary: Chapter 17
Ishmael’s nurse, whose name is Esther, tries to befriend him. He accepts a Walkman cassette player from her, and in exchange, he reluctantly agrees to talk. When Esther asks how Ishmael got the scars in his left shin, he answers in detail, to shock her and make her stop asking questions. His unit, he explains, was ambushed by rebels. Ishmael was shot three times in his left foot. The third bullet stayed in his foot and was removed only after a difficult, painful operation by the unit’s medical sergeant. Ishmael took revenge on six rebel prisoners by shooting them in the feet and watched them suffer for a day before executing them. Esther tells him that what happened is not his fault, which Ishmael hates being told. Meanwhile, his migraines have returned and are becoming almost unbearable.
Esther arranges for Ishmael to receive a full medical exam at the hospital downtown with Alhaji coming along as well. The three ride downtown with Leslie, a man from a Catholic organization that works to rehabilitate child soldiers. Leslie is assigned to work with Ishmael and Alhaji.
Ishmael has a violent nightmare that ends with his family inviting him to sit down with them. He is covered with blood, but they do not notice. After Ishmael describes the dream to Esther, she repeatedly tells him that none of what happened was his fault and he finally begins to believe her. One night, Esther invites Ishmael for dinner at her home. During a walk after dinner, he looks up at the moon, as he did when he was a child, and tells Esther about the shapes he sees.
Analysis: Chapters 15–17
Jumping ahead two years, Ishmael’s transformation into a child soldier is thematically complete, but immediately interrupted by his rescue. When he is ordered to go with the UNICEF workers, Ishmael’s new “family”—his squad—is taken away from him. The staff at the first rehabilitation center does not understand the radical transformation of these boys and expect them to happily turn away from their lives as soldiers. But Ishmael is unable to leave his violent life behind and instigates a deadly battle between rebel boys and government boys who have all been placed in the same camp. It seems as though Ishmael may never recover a normal life, having been so thoroughly manipulated. But gradually, as the drugs wear off, Ishmael begins another transformation. With the help of Esther, Ishmael begins to recover his stolen childhood. This process is not easy or quick, and Ishmael’s nightmares and traumatic memories are intense and long-lasting. But with Esther’s help, Ishmael transitions out of the deadly mindset that circumstances forced upon him.
While Esther bandages Ishmael’s hand, he recalls his nickname when back with the squad: “Green Snake.” Previously in the book, snakes had represented danger and death. But in his time with the squad, Ishmael had come to embody those same elements. He was a dangerous and deadly soldier, and part of the chaotic war he once feared. Now, instead of falling back on happy memories of childhood to get through a difficult time, Ishmael looks back on memories of the terrible acts he committed during the war, and the bonds of friendship he made while torturing and killing his enemies. A part of Ishmael would still rather be “Green Snake” the killer, and not simply Ishmael the fifteen-year-old boy.
In incremental steps, the children begin to regain the innocence they lost in the war. This is a highly important theme in the narrative, since it had seemed this innocence was lost forever when the children became killers. Now, they slowly detox from the drugs they had been fed by the army, play sports, and attend school. The boys’ trip to Freetown is reminiscent of untraumatized children on a school field trip. During this time, Ishmael shows a strong desire to regain the happy memories of his childhood and begins looking for some way to regain his innocence.
Two important symbols return to Ishmael in this section: rap cassettes and the moon. Ishmael forges a friendship with Esther after she buys a Walkman and rap cassette for him. The cassette is significant because it symbolizes a return to Ishmael’s childhood. The moon, so absent from Ishmael after the deaths of his family members, also returns to him when he is with Esther. Ishmael recalls the happy childhood memories that the moon evokes for him, signifying that he is beginning to heal from his life as a child soldier. The moon reminds him of his family, and his happy childhood. When he and Esther are walking back to Esther’s house, Ishmael feels that the moon is following them. These two symbols, and their return to Ishmael’s life, signal a healing transformation.
